Date: 30 September 1903
Pages: 252-254

party. Otherwise your accusations are mere Parteiklatsch *) as an account for the future.

Take the first option—then do not extend your grievance to abandoning work, and work will quickly make you forget the "fury." There is no more hopeless dead-end than the dead-end of removal from work.

*) By "new," "formal basis," Vladimir Ilyich means the new position in the party created by the Congress, after which the ideological leading center in its internal relations had to reckon with the party's decisions, unlike the previous situation when all questions of the center's internal relations (the editorial board of Iskra) were decided exclusively by internal struggle between individual members.

2) The mentioned letter to Starover (A. N. Potresov) is cited above (pp. 215–217).

3) Here Vladimir Ilyich has in mind the frictions that repeatedly arose within the old editorial board of Iskra between the group of "old-timers" (members of the Group "Emancipation of Labor") and the group of "young" people (Lenin, Martov, Potresov). The "obstacle" was the lack of determination to defend one's own opinion on the part of Axelrod and Zasulich, who repeatedly backed down before Plekhanov in the face of fairly frequent conflicts of the latter with Lenin (see the editorial correspondence of Iskra in the Leninskiye Sborniki III and IV).

4) "Troika"—the project adopted by the Congress proposed by Vladimir Ilyich on the election of a new editorial board of the C.O. consisting of three members. For more details see also the aforementioned letter of V. I. Lenin to A. M. Kalmykova of 7 September and notes 7 and 8 to it (pp. 205 and 208).

5) It is not established what exactly from the history of the old editorial board of Iskra Vladimir Ilyich has in mind here. One may suppose that the matter concerns an episode from the personal life of I. E. Bauman, which took place in exile in Vyatka province and was brought to the attention of the editorial board of Iskra.

6) "Beasts and monsters,"—apparently V. I. Lenin and those members of the editorial board of Iskra who were in solidarity with him regarding the mentioned episode.

7) The discussion concerns the same episode (see note 5).

8) The further part of the letter is in undoubted connection with the negotiations with the Martovites described below from 25–28 September and contains an indication of the reason for Lenin's rejection of the proposal on cooptation of the four former editors, which constituted an essential part of the mentioned negotiations.

*) — party squabbles. Ed.

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The resolution of the Geneva meeting of the "minority" printed above (pp. 245–249) represents the general plan of struggle of the "minority" for changing the composition of the centers. This general plan of struggle did not exclude negotiations with the majority; it only set such negotiations a definite goal ("change in the composition of the supreme institutions of the party") and limited them by definite conditions. As a starting point, the "minority" could rely on the proposal of Glebov (Noskov), made by him in London on the second day after the Congress closed. In his letter to P. B. Axelrod of 31 August, Martov wrote: "I am waiting for Alexander Nikolayevich [Potresov] and Vera Ivanovna [Zasulich] to work out a plan of campaign. It seems to me as follows: 1. The condition which Lenin sets, i.e., his election to the Soviet, in the final analysis is acceptable, for all its moral ugliness. Having in view that no Russian Central Committee in the long run will agree to the role of a tail, one can be confident that the majority in the Soviet will soon slip from Lenin's hands. One only needs not to allow the delegation to the Soviet to be considered indefinite, as apparently Lenin wants to interpret it. We can give an obligation not to recall him before, say, 6 months—c'est tout ... we will simultaneously conduct negotiations on the admission to the Central Committee of two from the number of our candidates, whom we can present among some 4 people. This condition is directly necessary..." "It goes without saying that in case of 'reconciliation' we must immediately work out an editorial statute, and in working it out guarantee the majority [of the editorial board. Ed.] all guarantees against the arbitrary rule of the 'victors'." ("Letters of P. B. Axelrod and Yu. O. Martov," Berlin, 1924, pp. 81–88.)

This program-minimum of the minority, which included: 1) restoration of the old editorial board, 2) cooptation of two members of the "minority" into the Central Committee, and 3) guarantee of the rights of the editorial majority by a special editorial statute—was regarded within the "minority" itself only as a "legal path to the full satisfaction of our demands" (letter of Axelrod to Martov concerning the conditions of agreement of 24 IX, "Letters," p. 95). In case these demands were accepted by Lenin and Plekhanov, the "minority" agreed to ensure—according to the proposal of Glebov (Noskov)—one place in the Soviet from the editorial board for a representative of the "majority" (personally for Lenin) and, in addition, to free all articles by Lenin and Plekhanov from the censorship of the remaining members of the editorial board. The acceptance of these conditions by Lenin and Plekhanov would, of course, have signified the capitulation of the majority. Although the majority did not know of the "plan" of the minority set forth in the resolution of the 47, Lenin very soon saw that the minority was prepared to use the initial proposals for restoration of the old editorial board only as a military maneuver, only to consolidate its position in the trenches of the further struggle.

Under these conditions, the previous proposal on cooptation of all four former editors became obviously inexpedient. Information about the change in the plans of Lenin and Plekhanov apparently reached the minority. Already in a letter to Axelrod of 23 September ("Letters," p. 94) Martov reports: "The general position of our 'victors' now is as follows: no concessions and complete submission. The former promises of restoration of the old editorial board have been withdrawn..." Pointing to this same circumstance in his letter to Axelrod of 20 September (ibid., p. 92, note 4), L. G. Deich gives the following explanation for the change in position of Lenin and Plekhanov: "Yuly Ossipovich [Martov] and Alexander Nikolayevich [Potresov] in conversations with Lenin proved to him that major principled disagreements divide us. Having heard this, Lenin and George [Plekhanov] declare that in that case it is impossible for us to coopt all 4, since then we would be in the majority; now they agree only to the cooptation of two, so that in the editorial board there would be an equal number of supporters of the two tendencies..." In his report Deich was not far from the truth, although he presented Lenin's line of thought too simplistically. The actual position of Vladimir Ilyich at the moment of interest to us (the 20s of September) is set forth by him in the aforementioned letter to A. M. Kalmykova of 30 September. "Now," writes Vladimir Ilyich here, "the dilemma stands inexorably: either disagreement on the question of persons, in which case it is ridiculous to make a political scandal over this and abandon the work. Or disagreement political—then it is even more ridiculous to 'correct' it by imposing certain persons of a different, so to speak, nuance. They are now taking (so to speak taking!) the second. Then let Martov enter the groove and prove to the party the mistakes of the 2 in your college..." The connection between these words of Lenin and Deich's report is undoubted: when they now take (so to speak take) the second, i.e., explain the disagreement by political motives—this apparently is a reference to those "disa-